Unfortunately, ITIL is abstract, representing concepts, vocabulary, taxonomy and ideas. Your implementation must be concrete, so no one can provide an end-to-end ITIL implementation “in a box.” It requires serious commitment from your executives and a candid self-assessment of IT, the processes in place, and more importantly, how IT and the business work together. Many IT managers lack the real-world ITIL experience necessary to overcome the adaptive cultural and organizational changes throughout their ITIL journey.

My experience in leading and participating in successful ITIL initiatives over the last five year, has led me to conclude that three principles, in particular, are essential for optimizing returns on any investment in ITIL implementation. They are:

Applying these principles quickly brings focus to your implementation, enabling you to demonstrate immediate value and continue your route through the ITIL journey.

But many IT managers have difficulty figuring out where to start. This can be made a bit less intimidating when one realizes that just about every IT organization already has many ITIL-like processes in place. Instead of seeing themselves as starting from scratch, ITIL leaders should consider what is already in place, the level of formalization and maturity they have already achieved, and the level they want to reach. After all, ITIL is not a destination it is a journey with phases of successively greater formalization and process improvement.

The Importance of SLA

Since ITIL’s primary purpose is to improve service management, I recommend focusing on SLAs (service level agreement) and service level management during the initial phase of an ITIL project. This helps ensure that the project places a priority on delivering services that are important to the business. By definition, the SLA is the primary output of the service level management process, providing the negotiated business requirements from which all other ITIL processes derive their “rightsizing.” IT organizations that already have SLAs in place should review them as part of any initial ITIL effort.

Unfortunately, SLAs often don’t exist or lack sufficient detail. ITIL recommends that SLAs contain the following sections:

Organizations that don’t have formal SLAs in place or have SLAs that lack sufficient detail should perform what ITIL refers to as “detective work.” This detective work involves the review of current business practices and artifacts in order to derive the implied services and SLA components. The formulation of this pro forma SLA then provides a basis by which ITIL implementation can proceed.

The SLM Discovery Process

IT organizations must also look across the entire IT environment to compile a list of services. A single pass through each of the areas below will generate a list of candidate services and a skeletal SLA for each. Reviews can then be done with service consumers (including customers, partners, and employees) to formalize and detail the services being managed. As ITIL acceptance and adoption continues to grow with the release of version 3, more and more IT managers are realizing that they need to figure out how to successfully plan, implement, and manage ITIL across their organizations.

Unfortunately, ITIL is abstract, representing concepts, vocabulary, taxonomy and ideas. Your implementation must be concrete, so no one can provide an end-to-end ITIL implementation “in a box.” It requires serious commitment from your executives and a candid self-assessment of IT, the processes in place, and more importantly, how IT and the business work together. Many IT managers lack the real-world ITIL experience necessary to overcome the adaptive cultural and organizational changes throughout their ITIL journey.

My experience in leading and participating in successful ITIL initiatives over the last five year, has led me to conclude that three principles, in particular, are essential for optimizing returns on any investment in ITIL implementation. They are:

Applying these principles quickly brings focus to your implementation, enabling you to demonstrate immediate value and continue your route through the ITIL journey.

But many IT managers have difficulty figuring out where to start. This can be made a bit less intimidating when one realizes that just about every IT organization already has many ITIL-like processes in place. Instead of seeing themselves as starting from scratch, ITIL leaders should consider what is already in place, the level of formalization and maturity they have already achieved, and the level they want to reach. After all, ITIL is not a destination it is a journey with phases of successively greater formalization and process improvement.

The Importance of SLA

Since ITIL’s primary purpose is to improve service management, I recommend focusing on SLAs (service level agreement) and service level management during the initial phase of an ITIL project. This helps ensure that the project places a priority on delivering services that are important to the business. By definition, the SLA is the primary output of the service level management process, providing the negotiated business requirements from which all other ITIL processes derive their “rightsizing.” IT organizations that already have SLAs in place should review them as part of any initial ITIL effort.

Unfortunately, SLAs often don’t exist or lack sufficient detail. ITIL recommends that SLAs contain the following sections:

Organizations that don’t have formal SLAs in place or have SLAs that lack sufficient detail should perform what ITIL refers to as “detective work.” This detective work involves the review of current business practices and artifacts in order to derive the implied services and SLA components. The formulation of this pro forma SLA then provides a basis by which ITIL implementation can proceed.

The SLM Discovery Process

IT organizations must also look across the entire IT environment to compile a list of services. A single pass through each of the areas below will generate a list of candidate services and a skeletal SLA for each. Reviews can then be done with service consumers (including customers, partners, and employees) to formalize and detail the services being managed.
As ITIL acceptance and adoption continues to grow with the release of version 3, more and more IT managers are realizing that they need to figure out how to successfully plan, implement, and manage ITIL across their organizations.

Unfortunately, ITIL is abstract, representing concepts, vocabulary, taxonomy and ideas. Your implementation must be concrete, so no one can provide an end-to-end ITIL implementation “in a box.” It requires serious commitment from your executives and a candid self-assessment of IT, the processes in place, and more importantly, how IT and the business work together. Many IT managers lack the real-world ITIL experience necessary to overcome the adaptive cultural and organizational changes throughout their ITIL journey.

My experience in leading and participating in successful ITIL initiatives over the last five year, has led me to conclude that three principles, in particular, are essential for optimizing returns on any investment in ITIL implementation. They are:

Applying these principles quickly brings focus to your implementation, enabling you to demonstrate immediate value and continue your route through the ITIL journey.

But many IT managers have difficulty figuring out where to start. This can be made a bit less intimidating when one realizes that just about every IT organization already has many ITIL-like processes in place. Instead of seeing themselves as starting from scratch, ITIL leaders should consider what is already in place, the level of formalization and maturity they have already achieved, and the level they want to reach. After all, ITIL is not a destination it is a journey with phases of successively greater formalization and process improvement.

The Importance of SLA

Since ITIL’s primary purpose is to improve service management, I recommend focusing on SLAs (service level agreement) and service level management during the initial phase of an ITIL project. This helps ensure that the project places a priority on delivering services that are important to the business. By definition, the SLA is the primary output of the service level management process, providing the negotiated business requirements from which all other ITIL processes derive their “rightsizing.” IT organizations that already have SLAs in place should review them as part of any initial ITIL effort.

Unfortunately, SLAs often don’t exist or lack sufficient detail. ITIL recommends that SLAs contain the following sections:

Organizations that don’t have formal SLAs in place or have SLAs that lack sufficient detail should perform what ITIL refers to as “detective work.” This detective work involves the review of current business practices and artifacts in order to derive the implied services and SLA components. The formulation of this pro forma SLA then provides a basis by which ITIL implementation can proceed.

The SLM Discovery Process

IT organizations must also look across the entire IT environment to compile a list of services. A single pass through each of the areas below will generate a list of candidate services and a skeletal SLA for each. Reviews can then be done with service consumers (including customers, partners, and employees) to formalize and detail the services being managed.
The Service Catalog - In the event that a service catalog exists, one should review its content and attempt to map it to an SLA. However, we find most clients have not formalized a service catalog and additional detective work is required.

The Service Desk Function - In many organizations, the service desk function is the service-consumer interface to service level management and therefore a source of service expectation information. It is important to remember that the service desk is not an ITIL process area, it is an ITIL function. Information discovered about the service desk, however, may relate to process area requirements.

ITIL project leaders may first query the service desk to derive its support hours. Those hours are the default service hours for all services. Project leaders can then look for any unique arrangements such as special service hours or areas of expertise. Those differentiations may imply unique service requirements for certain services, which can then be considered candidate services. For example:

Discovery for Financial Management

Most IT organizations calculate a budget for IT services. They may even charge for them. These budgets and invoices contain implied services and associated financial management requirements. Often, they are supported by spreadsheets that contain detailed financial information. Location and review of such documents can provide lists of candidate services and associated costs and charges.

Discovery for IT Service Continuity Management

One can obtain and review any existing disaster recovery plans to determine candidate IT services as well as their relative value to the business.

Other ITIL Processes

Similar exercises can be applied across all other ITIL processes to formulate a proforma SLA: Gather existing artifacts; Analyze them for implied SLA information; Review the analysis with stakeholders to formalize agreements.

We’ve all heard that “You can’t manage what you can’t measure”. Many people take this to mean that measurement is a binary issue, i.e. that either something is being measured or it isn’t. But that’s not always the case in the real world. Measurement can also be a continuum. So the question isn’t just whether something is being measured or not—it’s whether the level of measurement is sufficient to fulfill a company’s business requirements. With an SLA in hand, one can determine the right architecture to right-size ITIL implementation.

Editor’s Note: Additional articles in this series will delve into individual ITIL areas, providing use cases and architectures that illustrate ITIL implementation options with their associated costs and benefits.